MOSCOW, PARIS, March 21: Russia and France on Friday challenged the legal basis of the US-led invasion of Iraq, with Moscow saying it would appeal to the United Nations to rule on the legality of the attack.

French President Jacques Chirac said the United States and Britain had breached international law by declaring war on Iraq without a UN mandate.

The two countries had “breached international legality”, Chirac said at the end of an EU summit overshadowed by the Iraq crisis, which has sparked unprecedented rifts in the 15-member bloc.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia and other countries would ask the global body to determine if the US attack violated international law.

“With other states, we will put this question before the UN’s legal department. It is very important that these arguments (about the legality of US actions) are confirmed,” he told the State Duma lower house of parliament.

“This is the only way that we can use them as a strong weapon,” Ivanov added.

“If the UN Security Council describes the US actions as an aggression, appropriate measures will be taken. But if you or I describe them as aggression it won’t achieve anything,” the foreign minister said.

“The action has no legal basis and the attempts to justify it by resolution 1441 are not serious,” he concluded.

The US administration argues that resolution 1441, passed unanimously in November, which threatened Iraq with “serious consequences” if it failed to show it had handed over its weapons of mass destruction, provides sufficient authority for the war.

Mr Putin, who on Thursday called on the United States to stop the attack on Iraq, saying that attack was a “serious political mistake”, stepped up his warnings of the risk to global security, including on Russia’s own borders.

“The crisis has already spilled over from a local conflict, and today poses a potential threat to stability in other regions of the world, including the CIS,” Mr Putin said at a meeting in the Kremlin.

The CIS, or Commonwealth of Independent States, is a loose 12-country grouping of former Soviet republics.

Mr Putin warned that “the decision to launch a war has severe unforeseeable consequences.”

His comments came moments after Ivanov told Duma lawmakers that the United States was “occupying” Iraq since it sidestepped the UN Security Council in its decision to launch the war.

“We have questions about the planned military occupation of Iraq,” Ivanov told the State Duma in a crisis report on Iraq.

“Without corresponding resolutions of the UN Security Council, this occupation will be illegal,” Russia’s top diplomat added.

Mr Ivanov also said that Moscow would refuse any demands to expel Iraqi diplomats.

“If we were to receive such a request, it would have no legal force and we would react accordingly,” Ivanov told reporters in the Duma.

On Thursday the United States said it was asking governments worldwide to sever their ties with the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, shut down Iraq’s embassies and freeze its assests until new authorities are installed in Baghdad.

The United States abandoned its efforts to have the UN Security Council approve military action against Baghdad after apparently failing to gather enough support in the 15-member Council ahead of a vote.

Russia had struck an alliance with fellow permanent UN Security Council members France and China, along with Germany, in a hard-nosed diplomatic drive to block the joint US-British strikes. —AFP